


Want to Wear a Path With You

by semperama



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 13:08:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6154735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperama/pseuds/semperama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zach comes back to LA for a visit, and Chris wants to do something special for him. So naturally, he spoils his dog.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Want to Wear a Path With You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chaibrows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaibrows/gifts).



> This is for my lovely Catherine on her birthday. <3

The idea comes to Chris in a fit of mania. Zach is coming to LA to work out some stuff for the next Before the Door production, and Chris talked him into staying at his place rather than holing up in a hotel for the couple weeks it will take him to get all his business done. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now that it’s a couple days away, Chris feels like he’s losing his mind. He has already cleaned the house from top to bottom—right down to organizing the towels in the bathroom closet by color and hiding all his most embarrassing (i.e. least pretentious) books under his bed. He has made sure the fridge is stocked with the freshest and most enticing produce. He has made a list of all their old favorite haunts, so that when Zach asks him what’s planned, he can actually give a good answer. Zach hasn’t spent any real time in LA in what seems like forever, and Chris is as nervous as he is excited; he needs it all to be perfect.

Which is why he finds himself splattered in flour and shredded carrot, his fingers sticky with honey. Baking has never been his forte. He can make pasta from scratch with his eyes closed, and his ratatouille could make a grown man cry (even a man with more emotional fortitude than himself), but when it comes to sweets, he just can’t get the hang of it. His cookies always come out a little too hard, his cakes a little too dry. One time he tried to make cheesecake, and it completely failed to set, leaving him with cheese soup instead. But in spite of all that, he is baking now, spurred on by the roiling anxiety in his gut and the promise of the look on Zach’s face when he sees.

It turns out more or less okay in the end. Or at least, it _looks_ okay. Chris has no desire to taste it himself, but it’s moist to the touch and it holds up when he frosts it. His manic energy has subsided somewhat by the time he carefully places his creation in the fridge, but he doesn’t think his heart is going to stop thump-thump-thumping away in his chest until Zach is here—or maybe not until he has gone again. Still, it feels good to have this surprise in his back pocket. Whatever else happens, he can be relatively sure he’ll get at least one smile out of Zach.

Somehow he makes it through the remaining 40 or so hours until Zach shows up. Joe is the one picking him up from the airport and taking him to lunch, so he doesn’t make it to Chris’s house until the evening, one suitcase and one happy-looking Noah in tow.

“Thanks for being so accommodating, dude,” Zach says as he shuffles through the door and submits to Chris’s enthusiastic hug. “I just don’t like leaving him at home anymore, if I don’t have to. He’s getting old, and I get worried.”

“Not a problem,” Chris assures him as he squats to scratch Noah’s gray chin. “You could have brought Skunk too, if you wanted.”

“Nah, he’s pretty independent. And flying with one dog is more than difficult enough.”

“Noah? Difficult?” Chris rubs Noah’s ears and gets licked on his nose for his trouble. “I’d never believe it.”

Zach snorts. “How about you fly back with him then?”

They get Zach all set up in the guest room, and then Chris grabs a couple beers from the fridge and they go out to the back patio. Noah trots around reacquainting himself with everything, while Chris and Zach sink into the lounge chairs by the pool.

“This is nice,” Zach says, resting his beer bottle on his knee and closing his eyes, like he’s trying to soak in the ambiance. “God, it’s so nice. I think it’s like 40 degrees back in New York right now.”

Here, it’s a beautiful, balmy night. There is barely even a breeze, and even though the sun is going down, it feels as comfortable as if they were sitting inside. Chris watches Noah sniff around the vegetable garden for a few moments, then turns to look at Zach, smiling. “I remember you complaining that the weather never changes here.”

“Yeah,” Zach sighs, sounding resigned. “I’ve come the conclusion that I’m full of shit.”

“Man, you should have just asked me. I could have told you that a long time ago.” 

Zach looks over at him and rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling too. They share a long look before he drags his eyes away again, sweeping them over the yard. “Are some of these trees new?”

“Mhm. Two years ago now, I think. I put in another palm and a couple crape myrtles, for some color. They aren’t in bloom right now, but you should see it during the summer.”

“Two years.” Zach whistles low. “Times flies, huh? Where have I been?”

“Across the country,” Chris says, suppressing the urge to frown. He has missed Zach much more than he wants to admit. More than a friend should. There is something natural about having him here, about drinking beer together in the temperate California twilight. There is something satisfying about seeing him stretched out on a lounge chair, looking loose-limbed and mellow. Maybe it’s not Zach himself that Chris has missed so much as this feeling, they way they are when they are together—the way they _both_ are.

“Hey,” Zach says, shaking him out of his head. “I’m here now, right?”

That brings the smile back to Chris’s face. He pushes away his sudden melancholy and reaches across the space between them to kiss the neck of his bottle to Zach’s. “I’ll drink to that.”

Noah ambles back over to them and pushes his cold nose into the hand that Chris has left dangling over the edge of his chair. Chris scratches Noah’s ears and takes a swig from his beer and thinks about the surprise he has hidden away in the fridge. Yes, Zach is here now, and Chris needs him to know that he doesn’t take these moments for granted. He just hopes he has chosen the right way to get that message across.

———

When Zach gets back from a day full of meetings the next evening, Chris has the cake sitting in the center of the kitchen table and Noah sitting on the rug and he’s watching over them both like a proud mother. Zach gets three steps across the room before he notices the tableau, stops, and narrows his eyes in confusion. It isn’t until he leans close enough to read the crudely written “Happy Bday Noah!” on top of the cake that he sucks in a breath and rounds on Chris, eyes wide.

“You son of a bitch!” he says, his voice reedy. “You remembered!”

Chris leans on the back of one of the chairs, chuckling quietly. “Yeah, I remembered. And I hope you appreciate this, because I can’t bake to save my life.”

“Is this one of those—?”

“Yeah, it’s dog-friendly,” Chris confirms, cutting Zach off. “It’s got peanut butter and carrots and...it didn’t sound at all appetizing to me, but hopefully he likes it.”

Zach isn’t smiling, which is a little unsettling. He looks shocked. More shocked than he should be. Maybe it’s a little unusual for Chris to have remembered his dog’s birthday, but in his defense, Zach used to actually have _parties_ for Noah, when he lived here. Even if Chris hadn’t known off the top of his head, he could have gone back and looked at the dates on some of the pictures. 

“Christopher,” Zach says, looking up at him. “You baked my dog a cake.”

Chris’s face starts to heat up, and he ducks his head. “Yeah, I did. I was just...I got bored the other night. That’s all.”

“Uh-huh.” Zach clearly doesn’t believe him, but rather than press the issue, he turns to where Noah is sitting patiently next to the table and puts his hands on his hips. “What do you think, Noah? You want some cake?”

Noah’s tail thumps against the ground. 

Chris lets Zach do the honors. He brings out a knife from the kitchen and Noah’s dog bowl, and Zach cuts a thick slice and sets it on the floor. Noah sniffs around it for an unnecessarily long time. Chris feels like he’s holding his breath. 

“Uh oh,” he says. “What if he doesn’t—”

But before he even manages to get the whole sentence out, Noah opens his mouth and devours half of the slice in one bite, smearing frosting on his nose and whiskers. Zach laughs, a beautiful, delighted sound, and squats down to stroke Noah’s head lovingly. Noah smacks his lips and dives back in.

“Well,” Zach says, watching as his dog makes short work of the rest of the cake. “I hope you don’t start turning your nose up at your dog food after this.”

He stands up again and cuts Noah another slice, and Chris edges a few steps closer, chuckling under his breath at the site of the mess Noah has made, the frosting clumped in his fur.

“I think he might need a bath after this,” Chris says. Then, sheepishly, he adds, “Sorry, dude.”

Zach plops the second slice of cake in Noah’s bowl and then straightens up again, shaking his head. “Don’t apologize, Chris. This is…”

The sentence remains unfinished, but Zach keeps shaking his head and shrugs, clearly at a loss for words. And isn’t that strange? Chris doesn’t think he has ever seen Zach at a loss for words. Not in a long time, at least. It makes him feel proud. It ties his stomach into knots. 

“I just...missed you,” Chris says quietly. He isn’t sure he should be admitting it, but he wants to. “I wanted to do something special for you, since you don’t visit often.”

“Something special for me,” Zach repeats. He seems pensive now. His eyes dart between Noah and Chris’s face, like he’s trying to puzzle something out. “You wanted to do something special for me, so you made my dog a cake. You remembered his birthday, and you baked, even though you hate baking. And this is after you already opened your home to us, which would have been more than enough.”

Chris shrugs, but he is sure his face must be scarlet by now. “Yeah. That’s pretty much the summary.”

Zach studies him for a moment, then starts moving toward him—around the edge of the table, past Noah’s bowl. It feels like a sort of momentum is building between them, something like a runaway train. Chris doesn’t know where it’s headed, but he knows he has no choice in the matter. And that doesn’t bother him. This feels like the culmination of every moment he has ever spent with Zach, one unbroken line stretching back to the day they met. All of it has led to this, to Zach walking right into his space and taking hold of his biceps to draw him even closer.

“What did I do to deserve you, huh?” Zach whispers.

“Nothing.” Chris is breathless, but he can’t be embarrassed about it at the moment. “Not a thing.”

When Zach kisses him, it’s a revelation. He understands now why he spent days obsessing over his house being clean and why he _baked a cake for a dog_. He understands why it feels so good to have Zach here, like he had been holding his breath for a long time and he can finally let it out again. The breath flies out of him now, a gust against Zach’s cheek, and he thinks he feels Zach smile a little. Chris curls his fingers into his shirt and kisses him harder.

They break apart when Noah whines, having finished his second piece of cake and probably wondering why there isn’t more. Chris laughs a little as he looks over Zach’s shoulder. He hasn’t let go of him. He refuses to let go of him.

“I hope I haven’t spoiled him too much,” he says, shyly meeting Zach’s eyes again.

“Liar.” Zach brushes his nose against Chris’s cheek, then follows with his lips. “I think you knew all along that the way to my heart was through my dog.”

“If I had known that, I would have done spoiled him sooner,” Chris says. If he had known how he felt. If he had known Zach might feel the same way.

“Just help me bathe him and we’ll call it even,” Zach says. Before Chris can back away though, Zach kisses him again, with more intent this time. Chris’s knees feel wobbly when he pulls away. “That can wait though. I have other plans for you first.”

“Oh?” Chris asks, arching an eyebrow. He’s surprised he has it in him to be playful right now. He’s surprised he’s not a puddle of goop on the rug. “Are you going to let me in on those plans?”

“I think you’ll catch on all by yourself,” Zach says. He kisses Chris again, and Chris thinks he’s catching on already.


End file.
